News from aidsmap

A study of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) use conducted by
Public Health England in collaboration with PrEPster
and IWantPrEPNow finds that a
significant proportion of the gay men who took part have been unable to access PrEP,
despite wanting it. Men from outside London found it particularly hard to get
hold of PrEP.

The withdrawal of lay counsellors from primary health clinics in KwaZulu-Natal led to a sharp fall in the number of people taking an HIV test in 2015, a study published in advance online in the journal AIDS has shown. The findings highlight the important role that lay counsellors play in increasing the number of people diagnosed with HIV in a sub-Saharan African setting, the researchers say.

It is feasible to offer pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) as part of community-wide HIV
testing campaigns in East Africa, with a fifth of adults who were identified as
eligible for PrEP starting it within 30 days, researchers from the SEARCH
collaboration report in Clinical
Infectious Diseases. Early adopters were more likely to be male, older, in
a serodiscordant relationship or in a polygamous marriage.

The rising prevalence of transmitted antiretroviral drug resistance in the United States is unlikely to affect the success of first-line treatment in the future and is largely unconnected with recent treatment failure in people already on antiretroviral therapy, a large analysis published in Clinical Infectious Diseases shows.

People with HIV whose viral load has been fully suppressed for at least two years have a significantly lower risk of developing any form of cancer than other people with HIV, but still retain a higher risk of developing cancer than HIV-negative people of a similar age, a study of US military veterans published in Annals of Internal Medicine shows.

The latest sexually transmitted infections (STI) surveillance report from Public Health England (PHE) confirms that cases of the bacterial STIs gonorrhoea and syphilis have continued to rise in England.

Frailty is twice as prevalent in middle-aged and elderly HIV-positive men as in their HIV-negative peers, investigators from the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) report in AIDS. Risk factors were abdominal obesity, loss of skeletal muscle mass (sarcopenia) and osteoporosis and these did not differ by HIV status. Men with HIV with the highest waist measurements were seven times more likely to be living with frailty than men with lower waist measurements.

The close contacts of people with active pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) have high rates of the disease, according to US and Canadian research published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. Almost one in twenty close contacts contracted TB, with three-quarters of diagnoses made within three months of the diagnosis of the index patient.

Almost
anywhere in the world, an HIV-positive woman who has a negative
partner and wants to have a baby would be first in line to receive antiretrovirals.
The challenges Katia faced in getting treatment amid Russia’s epidemic
highlight the country’s faltering response, which critics have blasted
as misguided, lackadaisical, and downright dismissive.

The booklet is a starting point for anyone who wants to find out
about treatment for HIV. It includes information on all the antiretroviral
drugs that have been licensed in the UK or European Union and are recommended
for prescription by the British HIV Association (BHIVA).

NAM is an award-winning, community-based organisation, which works from the UK. We deliver reliable and accurate HIV information across the world to HIV-positive people and to the professionals who treat, support and care for them.